s, less scholarly than DuBois, less
eloquent than the late J.C. Price, he is yet the foremost figure in Negro
national life. He is a great educator and a great man, and though one may
not always agree with him, one must always respect him. The race has
produced no more adroit diplomatist than he. The statement is broad but
there is no better proof of it than the fact that while he is our most
astute politician, he has succeeded in convincing both himself and the
country that he is not in politics. He has none of the qualities of the
curb-stone politician. He is bigger, broader, better, and the highest
compliment that could be paid him is that through all his ups and downs,
with all he has seen of humanity, he has kept his faith and his ideals.
While Mr. Washington stands pre-eminent in his race there are other names
that must be mentioned with him as co-workers in the education of the
world, names that for lack of time can be only mentioned and passed.

W.H. Council, of Normal, Alabama, has been doing at his school a good and
great work along the same lines as Tuskegee. R.R. Wright, of the State
College of Georgia, "We'se a-risin' Wright," he is called, and by his own
life and work for his people he has made true the boyish prophecy which in
the old days inspired Whittier's poem. Three decades ago this was his
message from the lowly South, "Tell 'em we'se a-risin," and by thought, by
word, by deed, he has been "Tellin' em so" ever since. The old Southern
school has melted into the misty shades of an unregretted past. A new
generation, new issues, new conditions, have replaced the old, but the boy
who sent that message from the heart of the Southland to the North's heart
of hearts has risen, and a martyred President did not blush to call him
friend.

So much of the Negro's time has been given to the making of teachers that
it is difficult to stop when one has begun enumerating some of those who
have stood out more than usually forceful. For my part, there are two more
whom I cannot pass over. Kelly Miller, of Howard University, Washington,
D.C., is another instructor far above the average. He is a mathematician
and a thinker. The world has long been convinced of what the colored man
could do in music and in oratory, but it has always been skeptical, when
he is to be considered as a student of any exact science. Miller, in his
own person, has settled all that. He finished at Johns Hopkins where they
will remember him. He